Transitioning Your Products from Summer to Winter

The colder months are fast approaching. But as the seasons begin to change and crisp leaves litter the ground, many distilleries may be left wondering how they can transition their products from summer to winter. Seasonality undoubtedly has an effect on consumer buying behaviours and is something that has a particularly strong influence on the alcohol market.

How can you remain relevant in the colder months as a gin distiller that thrives in the summer months, or how do you diversify your range to remain popular year-round? To give a helping hand, we have put together our top tips on how alcohol brands can tackle seasonality and transition their products from summer to winter.

‘Tis the Season to Dress Up Your Brand

There’s no better way to jazz up your glass packaging than with decoration. Decoration is a powerful component to keeping your products at the forefront of the market and loved year-round, and this can boost sales not only through the seasons, but also over special holidays.

A brilliant example of how you can transition your glass bottle from summer to winter through the art of decoration is the Marks and Spencer globe bottle gins. Their Christmas snow globe gin is a smash hit year after year and has snowballed into a real market trend in shops during the festive season. But to keep the same level of adoration for the product running year-round, they created their strawberry gin liqueur. For this, there was no need to develop new bottle designs, instead we took their original globe gin bottle and adapted the decoration to emulate more of a summer feel. Our decoration team printed on a delightful strawberry pattern using UV inks on our Kammann machine to give it that summer flair.

Not only is decoration a delightful addition to your gorgeous glass, but it is an extremely cost-effective way to enliven your products. Eliminating the process of new bottle design and development and is a sure-fire way to bottle differentiation.

Diversify your Line

Diversifying your product line is the best guaranteed route to keeping your sales high throughout all seasons. A tried and tested method for brands with products that are not popular year-round is horizontal diversification. This process involves expanding into new product ranges that are unrelated to the current offering but target the same consumers. For example, a company producing whiskies which are notoriously in demand during the colder months, may introduce a line of gins, liqueurs or an aperitif for the summertime.

Flavours That Transcend the Seasons

Our final thought for tackling seasonality in the alcohol market is to develop season-friendly flavours. This is a significantly easier process for distillers of gins and rums as these spirits easily adapt to new flavour profiles. A delicious example of this is Warner’s warming Christmas Cake Gin which they brought out for Christmas 2022, filled to the brim with notes of chocolate, fruit, and treacle. Throughout the summer months, you will typically see more fruity and floral notes on the menu in Warner’s gins, but this product came as a delectable way to keep their gins thriving through the winter months.

Scaling your Brand

Here at Verallia, we specialise in bringing the world’s premium brands to life through the art of glass packaging and aiding our customers growth through our abilities in glass design, manufacture , and decoration. Through a combination of expert knowledge of the industry and passion for creative design, we produce distinctive bottles recognised across the world.

If you would be interested in working with us on breathing life into your brand through glass, please get in contact with our team.